Question

Let’s suppose there is a table user

id_user | name | id_state

1       | John |   2

and a table user_state

id_status | description

2         | User Active

using Codeigniter, what is the best way to do something related to that id_status, without having integer hardcoded in my code??
example:

if($user->id_status == 2){
    // do something
}

..

actually i have used in other projects a class to create “enums”:

Enum::Create('UserState', 'inactive', 'active', 'banned', 'deleted');

and them..

echo UserState::GetDatabaseID(UserState::active); // result: 2

.. and i think it is a good solution, but i have never used it in a Codeigniter project

Answer 1

If this user_state table is small enough (i.e. < 10 states) I would consider just putting an array right down in your application. So define some high level property in your My_Model for instance that says:

$this->user_states = array(
    'active'=>2,
    'deleted'=>3,
    'new'=>4,
    'verified'=>5
);

Then later in your code you just use something like

if ($this->id_status == $this->user_states['active']) {
}